My bike in it's natural environment

[5hort5]

Junction 22 South Bound M6, on the slip road in bits lol

Well I took it out for a test flight today after fitting new (old) carbs, rebleeding the rear brake and fitting the coil plastic armer to the reg/rec wires. This was the first time the bike had been on the road since I went for new PR2's a few weeks back so most things were very untested (brakes, valve covers, CCT etc etc) or not tested. Dead! Had to call the RAC doh!

Ok so here are the symptoms:

It was running ok but popping a bit on the exhaust, I think this is down to the carbs not being fully balanced (guessed by me yesterday). I rode for a good ten miles and then switched back south for home again at J23 of the M6. As I went up the slip road I noticed that the fuel light was on ????? Now I had just filled up with Shell V power not six miles ago. Any way as I approached J22 I got a back fire and then just passing the junction 3 or 4 back fires and a complete loss of power. I pulled in the clutch, went for the junction and coasted most of the way up the slip road. mmmmm

Now I think I know what's wrong due to what happening next but based on the above do you want to guess

[fastdruid]

A carb has popped off?

Druid

I would say fuel starvation. I would start looking at the vaume opperated fuel tap but it's funny the fuel light was on?

fuel line not reattatched correctly

I wonder if you got the vacume hose that opperates the fuel tap and the breather hose switched around. That would do it, or possibly a blocked fuel tank breather on its own.

[5hort5]

Nah - nothing so serious (I hope) for the carbs and interesting on the hose ...

I couldn't restart it and it seemed to be stuck in forth gear (in gear, side stand down = wont start even with clutch in - doh!). I rocked it backwards and nudged it down to neutral, (this was after a couple of smokes thinking and waiting for the RAC man) In natural it turned over but only just, the battery was totally dead! Again!

More smokes, hoping it didn't pee down

Now I had been riding with my lights on as I like to do and that had drained the battery but I thought I had fixed this with a new reg/rec. Anyway after about 40 mins the truck turns up to take me away but we just used a booster pack to jump the bike and it started first time Then we checked it with the man's multimeter and the battery was reading 10 volts and not charging. DOH DOH DOH

He followed me home but I didn't turn on anything electrical apart from the brake light in fear it would die again. Now the battery is on charge again but I think what I did was when fitting the armour coil around the reg/rec wirer's I took the live and earth off the reg/rec and with my setup I think I missed one of the spades connecting to the terminal and slid it between the two terminals !!!!! (I can think of a lot of words to call myself here), I'm not 100% sure of this and it's hard to see but I have refitted them again and once the battery is charged it's going back on and being tested.

I think the moral of my story is to test stuff after messing with it to be sure it's still working as you expect.

The second bit is the symptoms were intesting:

• Bike running with lights on
• Fuel light comes on
• Bike back fires
• bike dies

Now here's a question, does the curvy need electrical power to run? I guess it does but only a small amount, with the lights on as well it died. What do you think?

[fastdruid]

Yes it needs some, not a lot but some. Older bikes don't but they had points ign, zenor diodes and all sorts!

Druid

AFAIK all petrol engines need a battery to run. The battery provides low tension currant to the ignition system, without this you get no spark.
I would assume that as the battery gets weaker then so will your spark, hence the missfire

[fastdruid]

Originally Posted by shifter

AFAIK all petrol engines need a battery to run. The battery provides low tension currant to the ignition system, without this you get no spark.

Quite a few off-roaders still don't need a battery, kick start and CDI driven direct from the coil(s).

Druid

[yorkie_chris]

Yup the curvy needs some volts, not many, to run the ignition.

5hort5 the fuel light can do weird things when the charging messes up, not sure why it affects it. Probably same thing in clocks that switches fuel light on when you first turn ignition on.